Greater New Orleans

Lines of yellow police tape zigzag across the front of an apartment complex where Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives sought evidence in the death of Ahlitia North, 6, at a Harvey apartment complex last week.
(NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune archive)

For their annual meeting Wednesday in Grand Isle, several Jefferson Parish Council members breezed down by helicopter. They wore vacation-casual attire: matching lime-green cotton shirts. Then they got down to business, bashing Parish President John Young's administration for not moving faster to raze derelict buildings.

Council Chairman Chris Roberts and Councilman Mark Spears Jr. invoked the memory of 6-year-old Ahlittia North, who was stabbed to death last week in a rough Harvey neighborhood, to blast what they saw as inefficiencies in the process of condemning and demolishing abandoned buildings. "They're multiplying," Roberts said. "If we don't do something we're going to end up like some of our neighbors," a not-so-veiled allusion to New Orleans.

Spears' district includes the 2800 block of Destrehan Avenue, where Alhittia's body was found in a garbage bin. He proposed a resolution calling for condemnation and demolition procedures for derelict buildings in the Woodmere subdivision to begin "immediately."

Many residents called Spears' office to complain about the area and draw a connection between blighted properties and crime, he said. "They're frustrated," said Spears, who recounted that he visited the neighborhood Tuesday only to witness a "shoot out."

Spears and Roberts voiced their frustrations to Tiffany Scot Wilken, the director of inspection and code enforcement, who stood at a podium across from council. She said that her office was working on those properties but did not yet have a timeline for demolition, as the legal procedures required to raze buildings call for a certain process to protect owners from the government infringing on their property rights.

"You got in contact with us last week about these specific properties, about these specific properties, after that incident," she said. "We're working on it."

Spears countered that some properties had sat vacant since 2007. "There's no movement," he said. "It's just time for us to act." Roberts called the process a "merry-go-round."

They called for Wilken to bring to the next council meeting a list of properties that are pending demolition. Those are ones for which an administrative hearing officer has made a decision but the Code Enforcement Department has not yet acted.

"Be prepared for a length discussion at the next meeting," Roberts said. "I'm fed up."